Archive for December, 1999

I was an avid yoyoer for many months back at the beginning of the year. I’ve recently broken my old Bumble Bee back out for a few spins. The skills have gotten a bit rusty, but they’re still there. Kinda like riding a bike. Anyway, there’s a some new yoyo software coming soon that sounds kind of interesting. Here’s the scoop:

Simon & Schuster Interactive has forged a deal with Yomega Corporation, a leading manufacturer of yo-yo’s, to produce software based on the evergreen toy. The first CD-ROM to ship under the deal, Ready, Set Yo! for PC and MAC, focuses on technique and will come bundled with a Yomega Fireball yo-yo. It will ship in just a week’s time for about $19.95.

Wow.. my showing at the arcade was embarrassing today. I started out alright, trading matches one for one, but then I lost about 7 in a row. Horrible. I haven’t played in about 5 days, so at least I have a little excuse. There’s a tournament on Friday (finally). I’m gonna have to improve the skills by then.

I borrowed a dvd today to watch in the dvd player of my notebook. It’s rather impressive. Good smooth picture, nice sound as long as it’s not coming out of the notebook’s speakers. I watched Army of Darkness. It’s not a bad movie. There aren’t many extra things on the disc though. That was kind of disappointing. I wish there were more keyboard shortcuts in the player though. I was just using the default one. Are there other players available? I haven’t looked yet. Now I need some s-video cables to get it to the tv. That’ll tide me over until I can get hooked up with a playstation2. Wahoo.

I forgot to mention it before it happened, but Bruin got married over the weekend. The wedding was out of town (in Frankenmuth for those that know) and turned out really nicely. I was a groomsman so I got to stand up in front. Wahoo. Ok, now everyone congratulate him :).

I’m not in the mood to write at all. It was a long weekend with the wedding. I was up all night wednesday and late thursday. Then the reception party Friday and family over Saturday. I slept the majority of the day today. Now I have to practice singing for my class. I’m a horrible singer. I make myself cringe. But, I don’t feel like writing.

The latest NIN song to be released to radio is taking stations by storm. Into the Void has been added to 70 stations nationwide and is getting about 700 plays a week, climbing from 200 just 3 weeks ago. Maybe this recognition could help reverse the sales trend of the album, which has been plummeting ever since it debuted, even though it’s gotten rave reviews by critics all over. Actually, Spin magazine is going to name it the album of the year. I think it probably deserves it. Anyway, the song’s on the radio. Listen for it or something.

Sly Stallone is being sued by some former employees. They claim they were fired after only 6 days of the 15 day contract had been completed. It doesn’t really seem like their case has premise though because they were hired under certain rules:

they could be fired if they looked directly into the actor’s eyes, and they should “back out and vanish immediately” when Stallone entered a room at his former Miami estate.

They were also allegedly banned from speaking to Stallone’s mother, Jackie – “nor will you let her talk to you” – and from eating or drinking anything from the house

And then they claim they were fired for breaking those rules. Duh? What do you expect you buttdarts? And they’re suing for $1.5 million in damages. Damages? What damages? There’s only 5 of them, and they were working for 15 days. They couldn’t have been being paid that much, and I doubt they were scarred emotionally by these events. Sounds weak and desperate to me (unless the article is really slanted, which I doubt).

Uh-oh. Gotta update those virus definitions again. An ExploreZip variant, called MiniZip, is now spreading the net. It effectively does the same thing, which is clean stuff off of your hard drive, but is half the size of the original, weighing in at 120kb. It is contained in an executable attachment, called “zipped_files.exe”, to an email that reads “I received your email and I shall send you a reply ASAP. Till then, take a look at the attached zipped docs.” So, if you get an email that says that, don’t run the attachment. Read an article for more info.

It says that 12 companies so far have been hit by this virus. Now I realize that some people are unfamiliar with computers and such, but doesn’t it seem like these people would learn. If not for themselves, then it seems like they would have a company IS guy yelling at them to not open every email attachment that they get, especially if it doesn’t make any sense. I guess some people are just stupid with this stuff, and there’s no fixing it. At least it gives 13 year olds a hobby in virus writing.. something to keep them off of the streets.